Colo vacancies on the rise: With three new data centers scheduled to open in London, vacancy rates for colocation are on the rise there as well as globally in cities like Los Angeles and Hong Kong, a TeleGeography report says. Vacancies in London rose this year from 17 to 28 percent and will likely climb when the new data centers open 160,000 square feet more space in the city. In L.A., vacancy rates rose from 21 to 36 percent, and in Hong Kong they climbed from 19 to 34 percent. However, the increase in colocation space isn't a bad sign at all: Colocation providers are anticipating large growth in demand for data center services. "Despite the increase in vacancies, demand for colocation services remains strong," said TeleGeography analyst Jon Hjembo. "In fact, colocation sites built in the past two years are filling at a faster rate than comparable sites were last year." News release
Optical components market in flux: Ebb and flow has been the key phrase in the ROADM WSS (reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer, wavelength selective switch) components market in the first half of 2012, Infonetics Research notes. "Growth in the overall WDM ROADM equipment market hasn't been stellar, but it has far outstripped the declines seen in ROADM WSS units and revenue," said Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research. Declines in unit shipments, which hit a five-year low of 6 percent of the total ROADM WSS market, led to a 34 percent drop in ROADM WSS component revenue during the period. However, this market is expected to grow at a 9.5 percent CAGR between 2011 and 2016, thanks to the upcoming rollout of Greenfield coherent 100G networks beginning in 2014. "I think we have learned that the WSS market is more cyclical and tied to the ebb and flow of common equipment deployments," Schmitt added. News release
Robot apocalypse imminent: In the wake of Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) embarrassing earnings gaffe on Thursday, pundit Jeff Reeves mused that the accidental early release of its finance data, which sent Google's stocks tumbling and forced a stop in trading of its shares, is just a harbinger of things to come as more and more functions become automated. "…a tech company that is theoretically the touchstone of the Internet couldn't even manage a press release and standard SEC filing properly," Reeves said in a column published by The Slant. Citing Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) glitchy iOS 6 rollout as further evidence that we're not ready to cede control to the machine, he added, "These kind of shenanigans don't inspire confidence. After all, our high-tech society is only as good as the human beings who are setting up the technology and programming it to run… If there is artificial intelligence around the corner, I certainly don't want items like these as the springboard for the robot revolution." Story